1. Field of the Invention
An object of the present invention is a system to reserve a supply of goods or services to be obtained by self-service. This system of reservation is preferably one giving access to the supply of goods or services of a commercial type such as car rental or train seat reservation services. This system is more especially designed for suppliers of services providing their customers with services whose availability is not always entirely within their control. The system of the invention includes the use and operation of memory cards distributed by this supplier of services to his customers. These memory cards may be magnetic recording cards. They are preferably memory cards furnished with electronic integrated circuits, called chip cards, to ensure the safety of the transactions for which they are used.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Although car rental services need not be considered to be the only field of application of the invention, it shall be used as an example to demonstrate the drawbacks of such systems and the solutions brought to them by the invention. Car rental systems and the long drawn out administrative formalities that this service necessitates are well known. For, it is essential to identify the future driver of the rented car, especially to take down his driving license number, firstly in order to establish a relationship of responsibility between the rental firm and the driver and, secondly, as an option, to offer him or her personalized services such as insurance or special reductions. To speed up these formalities and also to create loyal customers, certain rental firms have taken to giving those customers who wish it, cards which are pre-recorded either mechanically or magnetically and have all the indications needed to identify these customers. Upon reaching his destination, generally at an airport or a railway station, a customer goes to the counter of the rental firm with which he is affiliated. There he fills in a rental form with the rental firm's agent by handing him his card. Besides, in many cases, customers with cards have priority over those without them. At the end of these formalities the rental firm's agent gives the customer the keys of the car that he has just hired and has had allocated to him, and tells him what car it is and where it is in a parking lot.
There are many problems with reserving cars. Essentially, unlike the practice in railway transport for example, it is never certain that the service, namely the car, will be available. For, previous customers might have decided to extend the period for which they had undertaken to hire a car. Furthermore, it often happens that a customer takes charge of a vehicle in one place and returns it to the rental firm in another place. By increasing the the rental firm's fleet of vehicles, these problems of availability can be solved statistically. However, while it could then be supposed that the demand can be met on the whole, vehicles that have actually been returned on time and are available at a parking place cannot be handed over to customers without human action.
Thus, the advance reservation of a vehicle at a given place and on a given date does not truly correspond to a reservation. For, it does not prevent the customer from having to stand in a queue consisting of all those who have also made reservations and have come to the rental firm's counter to get information about the renting of the vehicles allocated to them. The indispensable presence of staff responsible for making the vehicles available increases the cost of renting vehicles. Furthermore, the fact that the vehicles in question are often taken at late hours and even at night entails exacting work. And the additional cost related to work done outside normal working times also increases the cost of renting a vehicle. The solution wherein the rental firm's staff work in the daytime to maintain returned vehicles, for example, cannot be envisaged with a system of this type.
An object of the invention is to overcome this drawback by proposing a system wherein, to make the reservation, identify the renting party and, especially, to provide access to the supply of the reserved good or service, a memory card is used having interactive links with the reservation system and with means of access to this good or service. Thus, once the reservation is made, the reservation system or card, or even both, contain information relating to the reservation. Later, when the supplied service or good is taken, for example when the renting party goes and takes charge of the rented car, he inserts his card into a terminal of the reservation device near the place where he will take the supplied good or service. This terminal tells him where and how to find the car allocated to him. The place in which the car is parked can be displayed on an indicating panel connected to the terminal. In a preferred way, the "how" function is achieved by creating recognition protocols, at the instant when the card is inserted, between this card and a post for access to the good or service. This protocols may consist in the addition of an electronic key to the card in such a way that, near the designated vehicle, the customer inserts his card into an access post called a vehicle releasing post or, more generally, a post to release the supply or a good or service, which physically gives him access to the good or service. Preferably, the chip card will play the role of a key that opens the doors of the vehicle, and that of a switch key to start this vehicle.
When the rental period is over, the renting party will place the car that he has used in a parking place belonging to the rental firm, and will block all access to this vehicle by inserting his card into the releasing post associated with this parking place. A barrier controlled by the releasing terminal is then lowered while the post may issue a receipt concerning the characteristics of the service provided, in particular its duration. This post can also be used to introduce these characteristics in a suitable zone of the memory card.